Chapter 4 - The Matriarch's Web
The next morning, I left Mave and Posie at the safe house with a dozen of my most loyal men, personally vetted by Wesley.
I drove back into the city alone.
It was time to pay a visit to the woman who gave me life, and then ruined it.
The Hail Estate was a sprawling mansion on Long Island, quiet and imposing. As I walked through the front doors, the staff parted like the Red Sea.
They had seen the news.
The billionaire groom who walked out on the mafia princess.
I found my mother in the sunroom, sipping tea as if the world wasn't burning around her.
Victoria Hail was a woman of terrifying elegance, her silver hair perfectly styled, her posture rigid.
"You've made a terrible mess, Garrett," she said without looking up from her newspaper.
"Where is she?" I demanded, locking the heavy oak doors behind me.
"I assume you mean Coraline. She's with her father, plotting how to dismantle our shipping lines as retaliation for your little stunt."
I walked over to the glass table and violently swiped her fine china onto the floor.
The teacup shattered into a hundred pieces.
My mother finally looked up, her gray eyes—the same eyes as Posie's—narrowing in annoyance.
"Temper, Garrett. It makes you look weak."
"You threatened my child," I growled, planting my hands on the table and leaning into her space. "You put a gun to my pregnant wife's head and forced her onto the street."
Victoria didn't flinch.
"She was a distraction. A nobody. A waitress with no pedigree and no power. You are the head of the Hail family. You needed a queen, not a peasant."
"She is the mother of my daughter!"
"She is a loose end!" Victoria snapped, finally showing her teeth. "A loose end that you have foolishly brought back into the light. Do you think Marcus Ashford will let this go? He will kill the girl and the child just to make a point!"
"Let him try."
"You are arrogant, Garrett. Just like your father."
"And you are dead to me," I said, my voice dropping to a deadly calm.
I pulled out my phone and pressed a single button.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, a hint of unease creeping into her voice.
"Taking out the trash."
The doors to the sunroom burst open. Federal agents, led by a contact I had been cultivating for years, flooded the room.
Victoria stood up, her face draining of color.
"Garrett! What is the meaning of this?"
"Those offshore accounts you used to pay off Mave's landlord? The illegal wire transfers you authorized to the Ashford family to secure the marriage?" I smiled coldly. "I just handed the ledger to the FBI."
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"You're destroying your own family!" she screamed as an agent placed handcuffs on her wrists.
"No," I replied, turning my back on her. "I'm protecting it."
